You also found them really attractive too

One time. At band camp...
In high school a friend of a very attractive popular girl asked me if I liked popular girl. I thought she was playing some kind of prank on me so I said no. It was not a prank. She really did like me. To this day I wish I would have said yes.
- One time a girl in my computer class kept asking me for help. She'd ask me to stand behind her and point to where she should click. She asked if the view was nice, which was weird since it's just a computer screen. Eventually, she decided I should move her hand while it was still on the mouse. That happened a lot and I always thought "wow this girl really doesn't get computers."
  I was in my late 20s before I realized she wanted me to look down her top and touch her hand. She must have been thinking "wow this guy really doesn't get women"
  
  Fuck that's the best cringe story yet
  
  For all the sadcringe in this thread. This is true cringe. I feel the pain in my soul. She did basically everything but put your hand down her shirt.
- There are many things further down the road to go wrong with attractive popular girls. 2 most catastrophic cases in my life are with those such as them.
  Admittedly I'm the one who mainly failed them due to misunderstandings and passiveness, but when a girl (being all that popular) is used to boys being rather active and competitive and social, and then you are here just cause she happened to like your looks, this may end painfully, for you more than for her.
  There are also cases from the post, only I may have noticed, just wouldn't risk losing an existing good friendship for possible romance.

Hell, I'm so socially inept that I interacted with girls in the past and then as they were leaving I was told that I did well at flirting with them, to which I responded with, "I was flirting?"
- What is flirting but a good conversation with some complimenting and occasional teasing?
  I really wish when I was younger people hadn’t put the title of “flirting” on having a fun conversation with people of the opposite sex, and put it on the checklist of getting a date. If people had just said “be yourself and try to have fun”, around all intersections (and not just as cheesy dating advice when talking about the opposite sex) I probably would’ve been a lot more successful in forming relationships in my teenage years.
  
  Truth, friend. Truth.

you missed their flirting because you didn't liked them enough, or they didin't like you enough to say to you, or flirt until you take the hint
source: my girlfriend has social anxiety and is shy asf, but she really showed it, and i'm a dumbass
- Oh I figured they were flirting only that this realisation occurred three months after the fact.
  I would have very much wanted to date them.
- Or because one or both parties are very socially inept.
- Lady with social anxiety here to confirm. Flirting is useless. Every time I’ve just given up and asked the dude to date after being extremely forward for a while and they’re always shocked 🤷🏼‍♀️ Once we get past that, it’s great.
- Nah, I've certainly had a few reflective moments where I realized my missed opportunities. The reality is, unless you're really confident and self-possessed, it's hard to put yourself out there. So I can understand why these guys didn't just spell it out for me, cause they likely weren't sure I was into them. And on my end, I always struggled with low self-esteem, so I just assumed that these attractive guys weren't actually into me and were just being nice/good friends.
  Anyways, I'm glad your girlfriend is an exception to the rule.
- you missed their flirting because you didn’t liked them enough
  More likely that you missed it because you didn't like yourself enough to believe that they were sending out clear hints.
- You missed their flirting because a good portion of your highschool class discovered that the absolute funniest gag in the world is to "flirt" with you.

Thinking about that time I comped a cute girl's meal (she forgot her card and I had a line to the door). She came back after closing hours and knocked on the door. She was really greatful for me covering her meal and wanted to pay me back. I told her it was okay and then locked the door (without a further thought). She then stood there for a bit before leaving... Later a coworker came over and was like "dude, I think she wanted you to ask for her number." You could hear the gears turning in my head after that

A person could tell me out loud "I'm flirting with you" and my awkward ass would still find a way to fuck it up
- By asking them "Why?"
- You never know, they might just be Canadian.
- "I'm flirting with you,"
  "Why? Don't lie to me." Whilst I'm making a mental list of absolutely everything why that's complete bollocks
- Imagine a girl you like putting a hand on your shoulder, looking into your eyes, saying some gentle word I don't quite remember due to being mesmerized by those eyes, and you know what I did? I just looked back uneasily for a few seconds, then nervously took her hand off my shoulder, shook it a bit, released it and awkwardly smiled. (That even wasn't her last attempt to make me happy against my best efforts ; ended bad anyway.)
- I had a girl in high school (high school!) literally say to me "when am I going to get to feel that dick of yours inside me?" and I blew it, thought she was just joking.

I respect your optimism

I was just thinking about this girl I worked with at a summer camp who suddenly said "you have amazing eyes" while I was talking to her. It was genuinely like two years later until I realized she said that because she was into me. I wasted the whole summer chasing a Dutch girl who, when I asked her at the end why I hadn't gotten anywhere with her, said "I was disappointed in your physique."

Was just realizing this morning that my ex-wife was clearly trying to signal interest in a threesome with another woman.
Thanks for this and fuck my life.
- The bedrock of a good relationship is communication. If she wanted to do a threesome, she should’ve just talked to you about it lol
  
  Yeah, for sure. It was complicated. We are (friendly) exes for a reason. Nonetheless, it seems pretty clear in hindsight that I might've had a threesome with two Ukrainian women on several occasions had I not been so special and unaware and...it's just really hard, y'know? It's just really hard.
- those random realizations are the worst, like one day years later realizing that the proper response to a girl inviting you in for beer is not: "no thanks I have had too much yesterday" and then leaving
  
  "Ahem, unlike those other normie assholes, I moderate my alcohol intake, thank you. (That'll impress her...)"
- This reminds me of the time I went home with a lesbian couple after a party, and not realizing they were interested in sex with me, even after dropping hints like repeatedly telling me things like: "You know, we've both been with men before", then while awkwardly watching a movie on their couch they started to undress eachother and make out, and one girl pulling me in to touch her body as the other girl moved to perform cunnilingus on her.
  And all I could think was: oh wow I should probably give them some privacy now, I guess it's time to go home.
  
  Whaaaaat.

I once had a girl straight up say, "I'd do you", to which I stumbled and mumbled out nothing much in reply. I don't think I realized until about 5 years later I could have had sex that day :(
- She was probably just being nice.
  
  again you really can’t tell, she might be canadian and is just nice as a profession

Ha jokes on you i always run away from women

8th grade. A girl tells me in the presence of classmates, “I love youuuu.” I just think it’s a joke/prank so I reply, “I’m too young!” Later she privately asks me if I meant that. It didn’t click for me until high school.
Fresh out of an all-boys high school, so no interaction with girls since 8th grade. Freshman year college, fall semester. Classmate says she’s cold and hooks her arm in mine on the walk to lecture. This happens every day. Another classmate asks if we’re dating, and I say no, she’s just cold.
Same semester, same class, in a lab section, it’s warm. I ask my lab partner (different from arm girl) doesn’t she feel hot, why not take off her sweater. She looks at my and says, “I’m not wearing anything underneath.” Next day in lecture she’s dresssd up really nice and sits next to me.
Every day in this lecture these 3 girls sit with me. My high school buddy who’s also in the class tells me, while we’re studying, he thinks it’s hilarious that I’m surrounded by girls. I shrug it off.

heaps
- The cops will never find them
- This means they are in arrays that satisfy the heap condition, resulting in efficiently traversable and sortable tree structures.

The replies in this thread make me feel better for being so oblivious in college.
I still cringe at it but I'm glad I got past it. Again like many of you I don't know how on earth I got married.

Unfortunately, I think sentiments like these lead so-labeled ugly “creeps” to start seeing false positives.
Just communicate clearly. It’s the safest thing.

That isn't even the slightest true. There hasn't been a single moment in my life where I was in the situation that I talked with a woman outside of them being my classmates(and even then those conversations were mostly questions and the rest being things I or them said in a bigger group). I never had a real conversation with a women so there's absolutely no chance that I missed flirting since there was no situation where flirting could have occurred.
Sitting here writing this I realise how bad my social life/skills are.

Don't worry, just focus on what you missed before and you'll catch the next one

Lies.

I call bs

or we just eyed each other from afar, but not obviously enough for the other person to notice, and never found an excuse to make closer contact.

If they weren't communicating at my wavelength anyway, it wouldn't have lead to anything 🤷‍♂️ Natural preselection.
- my partner of 3 years was so dense i was worried she was trying to reject me subtly by just not a acknowledging my flirting .
  Eventually i had to just say "come over and lets have sex", for her to get it. If we hadnt already known eachother for a decade I wouldve just given up because I wouldnt want to be labeled a creep in my friend group.

I can't take it anymore 😭

This... is surprisingly familiar...

The true tragedy is when you get all the social signals and you have the thought “man I wish I could just date multiple people at the same time” and it doesn’t occur to you to try that because… ???
Now I’m old and have to work 1 1/2 full time jobs to pay my bills, so. That won’t be happening.

In high school, we had a science fiction club. I was vice president in my senior year. A year after I graduated, I was hanging out with some fellow graduates and one of them said, "How come you hated Christine so much?"
"Who?"
"Christine Smith. The blonde girl?"
"The blond girl who wore all those surfer shirts?"
"Yeah. Whats so bad about her?"
"Nothing. She was always so quiet. I barely remember her."
"Yeah, well she practically threw herself at you, and you treated her like she didn't exist."
"She did?"
"Yeah. We even tried to make it easy. We set her up at parties to talk to you, and you just acted like she wasn't even there. You were so rude."
"I literally had no idea. I totally would have dated her."
"Yeah, well, too late. She got so depressed after you graduated, that she ended up dropping out of everything and tried to kill herself. Shes been hospitalized and her parents moved away to be with her. Like, couldn't you gave even said hi? Just because you made vice president of the club didn't mean you were better than her or something."
I literally had no idea.
- She didn't get depressed because you didn't talk to her, and she wasn't interested in you because you were VP of the science fiction club in high school. It all just sounds so self important even if that's not your intent.
- And then everybody clapped, question mark?
  Because if it were true, those colleagues were stupid AF not picking up that you weren't picking up. Or that they tried to force the romance, clearly leading her into depression.
  So I call BS, sorry.